India’s capital buckling under strain
NEW DELHI: Delhi’s Covid19 deaths rose by a record number yesterday and it also reported the most number of infections in India, an increase attributed to the city’s toxic air and a lack of physical distancing in public places around a major festival.
While daily case additions have come down significantly in the country as a whole since a midSeptember peak, the capital city of 20 million people is going through its worst phase in the pandemic.
Delhi yesterday reported 104 new deaths and 7053 new infections. Data from the federal health ministry showed that infections in the country rose by 44,789 in the previous 24 hours, taking the total to 8.73 million, only behind the United States tally.
India’s deaths increased by 547 to 128,668.
As Delhi’s cases rise in its third wave of infections, many hospitals have already run out of intensive care beds and even normal Covid19 beds are getting occupied fast.
On the request of the local government, the Delhi High Court yesterday ordered 33 of the city’s private hospitals to reserve 80% of their criticalcare beds for patients infected by the novel coronavirus.
The Federal Government has asked Delhi to prepare resources to handle cases of up to 15,000 a day during the winter season, when pollution peaks in the city and respiratory issues jump.
The air is only likely to worsen at the weekend due to thousands of firecrackers ignited during the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali.
Its residents have already swarmed markets to buy gifts for family and friends.
Doctors say PM2.5 pollutants, fine particles found in high concentration in Delhi’s air, can break the nasal passage barrier, weaken the inner lining of lungs and facilitate the spread of coronavirus infection.
‘‘Painful’’, tweeted Arvinder Singh Soin, a surgeon in a top hospital near Delhi, referring to Delhi hospitals getting flooded with Covid19 patients. ‘‘And the festive surge has only just begun.’’
Meanwhile, European officials have warned against Covid19 complacency and said measures to control a surge in infections as winter approaches must remain in force despite hopes that new vaccines can bring the pandemic under control.
This week’s announcement by Pfizer Inc of a potentially effective vaccine spurred optimism that an end to months of crisis could be in sight, sending financial markets soaring and fuelling public longing for a nearly normal Christmas.
But France and the World Health Organisation urged people to continue complying with lockdowns as it became clear that the new vaccines would not come soon enough for many Covid19 sufferers and shrinking economies.
‘‘This is definitely not the moment to loosen up,’’ French Prime Minister Jean Castex told newspaper Le Monde in an article published hours before he was due to deliver a keynote speech.
One out of four deaths in France was due to Covid19, Castex said yesterday.
He told the news conference that one person was being admitted to hospital every 30 seconds in France.
While Pfizer and German partner BioNTech aim to produce 50 million doses this year if the vaccine is approved in time, it will not become more widely available until 2021, leaving strained health systems to manage until then.
In Italy, which reported 623 deaths on Thursday and passed the 1 million case milestone, and in Germany, which has also seen infections climb back to levels seen earlier in the crisis, officials said any return to normal would take time.
‘‘We really must grit our teeth for a couple more months,’’ said Lothar Wieler, head of Germany’s Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases. ‘‘Unfortunately it will take a while until everyone who wants to can get vaccinated.’’
The dire situation facing Italy, the country at the centre of the first wave of the pandemic, was underlined by a video on social media showing a corpse sprawled in a hospital lavatory, after the patient apparently died while waiting for a test. — Reuters